Matchsticks
by Catatonic Inspiration
Summary: Inspired by the Rin song, "The Flames of Yellow Phosphorus". Rin is out selling matches one cold winter night. When she doesn't sell any, and her father doesn't let her in, what will she do? One-shot, character death, slight pyromania. T for death and slight cursing *A get-well-soon present for one of the bestest people I know, Lina-chan!*


It was cold.

Of course it was cold, it was the middle of winter, after all.

I stood there shivering on the street corner, in a ragged red dress, holding a little brown basket.

A basket of matches.

I had to sell the matches, so I could make some money for bread.

I was so hungry. So cold and so hungry it was painful.

"Could you please by my matches?" I desperately begged the passerby.

Cruel. So cruel. They never even glanced my way, ignoring my pleas.

I slumped into an alley, sliding into the snow. It was so cold. My hopes were dying away, crackling into icy shards of despair. I was shaking, shivering, freezing.

What could I do?

It was so silly, the answer was right in my basket.

Light a match, of course. Melt the ice away before it ate away everything.

I carefully selected a match from one of the matchbooks and flicked it against the basket.

A small, bright yellow flame, the same color as my shining blonde hair, sparked into being.

It's funny, how just a bit of yellow phosphorus can make something so beautiful.

I watched the tiny fire slowly eat its way down the matchstick, and was amazed.

Within the flame's sputtering light, little figures danced. As if in some grand gala, beautiful pirouettes and sashays across a bright orange dance floor.

The women's skirts swished, the men's coattails fluttered as they spun off into the light.

The illusion ended as quickly as it began. The match went out, squelched by a harsh breeze.

Even though it was so small, it warmed me. Warmed my body and my soul, through and through. I felt like somebody had taken all of my happinesses and poured them into me, warming me as well as a belly full of tasty stew could.

It was…perfect.

I smiled at the warmth I felt flowing through me, all because of that one little stick of glowing yellow phosphorus.

It was starting to get rather late, even for a night I had to go try to sell matches.

Time to go home, and to tell Papa that I didn't sell anything today.

I hoped he wouldn't get too mad at me. Papa was cruel when he was angry.

The warmth was starting to fade as I began to dread Papa's reaction, his anger at the still full basket I held in my shaking, icy hands.

I trudged through the snow, taking my time, not wanting to face Papa's wrath, though I knew I must.

I arrived eventually at the small, modest cottage that Papa and I had shared for my entire memory. I think I remembered hearing once that my mother had passed away shortly after giving birth to me, and my twin brother who didn't survive. She had been sick with a horrid fever already, and combined with the strain of childbirth, it was too much for her weakened body.

At least that's what I'd heard. I knew the part about my having a twin was true; I had seen his grave next to my mother's when I visited them once a year on my birthday.

I carefully knocked on the kind of cheap wooden door, softly calling, "Papa? I'm home."

I heard a rustling coming from behind the door, and then the heavy sound of the deadbolt sliding open. The door swung open, and there stood my father in the doorway, the fire in the fireplace glowing behind his tall silhouette.

People say I take after my mother, minus my emerald eyes, which matched my father's. My father, Gumiya, was tall, muscular, with forest green hair and eyes that people say are a mix of all the best greens in the world; emerald, jade, spring shoots in the flowerbeds, and the color of the leafy forest branches in the summer. My father was a looker, I'll admit that.

However, he was cruel. Greedy. I think he blamed me for my mother's death, and resented me deeply for that. He never took proper care of me unless I gave something in return. During the winter, it was the meager money supplied by my few match sales.

He looked with me with the distaste one might have at stepping in dog excrement and said quite plainly, "How much did you make?"

I gulped. Papa's voice had its usual condescending tone, which I was used to, but it was especially harsh tonight.

"None tonight, Papa. No one wanted any matches, I guess…" I told him, eyes locked to my almost worn through leather shoes, carefully studying each little scrape and scuff.

He shook his head and scoffed, "Useless girl can't even sell matches right. You don't get to come in, or eat, until every single one of those damn matches are gone. And don't think you can just burn them up! I want that basket to be full of coins!"

And with that, my father slammed the door in my face, leaving me standing in the cold winter air.

I guess something within me snapped then. I was cold, I was tired, I was hungry. All I wanted was a loaf of bread. Just some plain old white bread to fill my empty stomach. I knew for a fact that Papa didn't even need the money from my match sales. He was just a greedy bastard that only kept me around for profit.

I started banging on the door and hollering. Screaming. Yelling. Kicking. Trying to make him open it and let me in, screaming, "Papa! Papa please! Please! Let me in! Please Papa!"

It was no use. All he did was yell at me to "shut the fuck up".

I sank to my knees, sobbing in the snow. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, it wasn't fair!

I stayed there for a while, slumped against the locked door, sobbing and screaming my throat raw and red. When I was finally done crying, I started shivering. Not just "I'm a little chilly" shivers either; shakes that shook me to the core, my teeth chattering viciously, I could feel my lips turning blue. Crying on the snowy ground had soaked my clothes through, and I was too cold to put into words. It was agony.

Then I remembered. The matches.

I glanced down at the basket, thrown to the ground in my panic to attempt to reason with my father. Most of the matches were wet and useless, but one book was still good and dry.

I knew how to get warm.

I took that one good book of matches and took a matchstick, flicking it against the side and lighting it. That bit of yellow flame winked at me as it sparked into being.

I looked up at the thatch straw roof of mine and Papa's cottage. It would make such good kindling, wouldn't it?

I stood up on my tiptoes and carefully lit a section of the roof on fire. When I got that burning steadily, I repeated the process at other points around the house.

My father had gone to bed by now; he didn't even notice that his house was beginning to burn.

It made a grand old bonfire, yes it did. The flames were much taller and more beautiful than they had been in the little matchstick in the alley. I could see those beautiful images of the dances in the flames so much more clearly.

The ladies skirts billowed around them as they spun and leaped with their handsome princes, splashing in frenzied hues of oranges, yellows, and reds.

It was a spectacular sight, and I could even smell the meat roasting for the feast they would have after their fun and dancing.

Though, I didn't think that the roasting meat would scream that loud…

0~0

I sat there in the snow, warmed as I watched the princesses in the flames leap and dance with their handsome princes, probably planning their escapades into the sunset.

It was so pleasant, especially since the meat had stopped screaming, finally.

However, after the towering flames burnt away my suffering, they slowly, very slowly, died, leaving a blackened corpse of the cottage in their place.

But I was okay with that. The princesses and princes had been dancing for me for so long; they deserved a nice long break! Now it was time for them to sleep, dreaming of their next performance!

I decided to poke around through the ruins a bit. Maybe I could find something to fill up my belly, so that this warmth I felt all over would be totally complete.

I searched through the rubble for a while, wrinkling my nose with distaste as I discovered a charred, long slab of meet, with crispy limbs, dead near where Papa's bed had been.

Nasty.

I eventually found treasure. A small pouch, full of beautiful, shining coppers had survived the princesses' and princes' dance.

I counted out the money, overjoyed to find out it was just enough for what I wanted most.

A loaf of bread.

I immediately ran to town, coins in hand, grin on my face, and the first place I went to was the bakery.

The baker, a fat, stern, aging man took the coppers from me without a word and gave me a most magnificent loaf, still warm from the oven, crust just the right shade of tanned brown, the homey smell of fresh bread coming off in mouth watering waves. He looked down at me and said, "Finally sell some matches, Match-girl?"

Match-girl was the name everybody called me. Only Papa called me my real name, Rin, and that was an uncommon occurrence.

I grinned up at the baker, "You could say that. Thank you!" And then I ran out of the bakery, my prize tightly clasped in my arms, the paper it was wrapped in crackling nicely.

Like the house did when it had burned. The steadily charring wood had made the loveliest crackling sound.

So, I ran home once again, to the burned down cottage in the woods, and happily ate half of the beautiful loaf. I wrapped the rest in its paper and fell asleep, pillowing my head on one arm, the other tightly grasping the bread.

0~0

The two men glanced at the scene before them. The charred shell of a tiny cottage, out of which was being brought a covered corpse. No positive identification could be made, due to the extent of the burns on the body, but it was believed to be the remains of Gumiya Kagamine, a widower father of a daughter known to all as "Match-girl".

"Match-girl", or her real name, Rin Kagamine, had been found a little bit away from the ruins of her home.

Rin, fourteen years old, blonde, thought to be a pretty little thing by most in the village, had frozen to death in the night, tightly clutching a half eaten loaf of bread to her chest, lying in the snow. The last person to have seen her alive had been the baker, who claimed that Rin had come to the bakery at about 11 p.m. and bought a loaf of bread with five coppers.

Then she was believed to have headed home, and no one knew what happened then.

The taller of the men, with impossibly long purple hair tied up into a ponytail, looked to his partner. "Sad, isn't it?"

His partner, a slightly shorter blue haired man, agreed. "Yeah. Her dad dies in a house fire that destroys her home, and the poor kid freezes to death holding some bread."

The case was believed to be accidental. Gumiya's untimely death had been an accidental house fire while Rin was out buying her bread. She probably ate half on the way back home, found her home destroyed and her father dead, and in her shock, curled up in the snow, clutching the most solid thing she had; her bread.

That was the official story that everybody believed. A tragedy, nothing that could've been done. A shame.

They really couldn't have been more wrong.

**Hello peoples! I am not dead! Just…lazy? xD**

**Not that that's new or anything.**

**This oneshot was inspired by the amazing Rin song by Mothy called The Flames of Yellow Phosphorus, but I have a quick note.**

**I changed the ending, because the song is based off of the fairy tale, The Little Match Girl. In it, the girl is scared to go home and face her poor family with no money, and is staying in a freezing alleyway. She lights the matches one by one to keep warm and has visions of things that make her happy, like a roast turkey and a Christmas tree all lit up in candles. Finally, the Little Match Girl sees her grandmother, who was deceased. She follows her grandmother up to heaven, and the next day she's found, frozen to death with a smile on her little face, cheeks pink from the cold.**

**So, I wanted to make Rin freeze to death, like the Little Match Girl did. Plus, I personally kind of like this better than the ending of the song, because in the song Rin is executed by burning at the stake.**

**It's just ironic, I guess. How a girl who burned her father to death freezes to death herself. Total opposites.**

**And as for the green eyes thing, in the PV for The Flames of Yellow Phosphorus, Rin has green eyes, so I wanted to give her green eyes in this, so it was suiting to make her father Gumiya (Or Gumo. Whichever name you prefer. I like Gumiya best myself.)**

**And for those of you who want to know, Rin's mother was Lily, and her twin who died at birth was….well…Len. Duh. xD**

**I hope you liked this oneshot, as it is an apology for my being so slow and lazy with updates for Silence and my other stories. I am working on it though!**

**Oh, I set up a poll on my profile for Silence. Vote who you want Rin to be with! Sure, I already have an idea in my head, but hey, your votes could sway me~**


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